We offer a pre-registration review service to help issuers, and their directors, feel more confident their offer documents are likely to satisfy our expectations.

We focus on reviewing new, novel and complex offers

You do not need to talk to us before registering your documents, particularly where there are similar types of offers already in the market that have good ‘precedents’.

However, if you are offering a novel or complex offer, we are happy to talk with you to clarify whether you would benefit from the additional guidance that a pre-registration review provides.

What you can do to help

To speed up our review, we recommend sharing a near complete draft with us sufficiently early in the process, so you are still open to making substantive changes to the content or structure where necessary. Any proposed financial information should also be included.

In most cases, we will only provide feedback on one draft Word version of an offer document, and, should you request it, a design version when close to registration. This is to get a sense of how the information in the Word version will be presented.

We may agree to review a further draft of an offer document on a case-by-case basis. We are happy to discuss our feedback in person with you and your advisers. You should include representatives of the issuer in these discussions (not just the issuer’s professional advisers).

We also encourage you to indicate any exemptions that may be sought early on so we can start our internal review of these exemption applications.

How we provide guidance

Depending on the circumstances and the timetable, we can provide guidance either in writing or verbally (either by phone or in person) or both.

We expect you and your advisers to take our feedback on board and make changes that reflect this feedback, unless you disagree and say why. At this point, we are happy to have a further discussion.

Review time-frames

We aim to review an offer document within 10 working days. However, if you let us know what your timetable is early on, we may be able to accommodate this. We can review a design version of the document more quickly if required (but this may be close to print deadlines and launch dates).

We will let you know the person who is leading your review from the start. We will also let you know about the timing and the extent of our review. It is also helpful for us to know your proposed timetable and who is involved from your end, ie, issuer’s representative, legal advisers, auditor, bankers/lead managers and any other key stakeholders.

To get your pre-registration review underwayplease contact us at compliance@fma.govt.nz (ensure you insert "PDS HELP" in your subject line) or call us on 0800 434 567 (+64 3 962 2698 for overseas callers)